Miners fear methane – the gas that exploded in New Zealand's Pike Ri ver coal mine – more than any other element of nature they struggle against underground. The very mineral that provides their livelihood can release this deadly gas. If it is not dispersed by ventilation and it ignites when it mixes with oxygen, its explosive force can tear through mines with devastating effect.

Three terrible British mining disasters – Senghenydd, South Wales, in 1913 (where 439 miners were killed); Gresford, North Wales, 1934 (266 killed); and Easington, 1951 (83 killed) – were all caused by explosions of methane gas, or, to use the miners' word for it, firedamp. Carbon monoxide, the gas released after a methane explosion – known to miners as afterdamp – is just as lethal in a different way. Just one inhalation of it can kill.

Three members of a rescue team that tried to enter Gresford colliery after the explosion in 1934 died from carbon monoxide inhalation while trying to find survivors. Two rescuers at Easington colliery, though they were wearing breathing apparatus, hurried forward too quickly and, according to the official inquiry, this "allowed carbon monoxide to leak past the mouthpiece".

With this in mind, it's hardly surprising that the authorities at Pike River prevented rescuers going in while there were such high levels of carbon monoxide around. Peter Whittall, the mine's chief executive, was not exaggerating when he said: "It's dangerous and it's hazardous, and the rescue teams would be putting their lives gravely at risk."

All efforts at Pike River are now concentrated on providing enough ventilation to disperse the carbon monoxide so that the bodies can be brought out. When miners die underground, the recovery of their bodies for a proper funeral is always a priority for their relatives – it amounts almost to an obsession.

After the Gresford disaster, 250 men were entombed when the mine had to be sealed off to prevent further explosions. Thousands of signatures on petitions were gathered from mining communities in every part of Britain urging that an attempt be made to recover the bodies, especially after it was rumoured that the colliery management would soon reopen sections of the mine not affected by the explosion.

The preamble to Gresford's own petition began: "We, the undersigned, widows and relatives of the entombed at the above colliery, feel very strongly that every possible effort should be made to recover the bodies before proceeding to produce coal."

Bereaved relatives told Edward Jones, leader of the North Wales Miners Association, they would be satisfied with body parts of their loved ones if they could only have them for decent burial. "Distressed mothers and relatives visit me almost daily, pleading for a bone or an ounce of their dust," he said. Formal burial was as important to the inhabitants of a colliery village as it was to the Greeks of the The Iliad.

This may seem strange to us today, when there are hardly any deep-mined collieries left in Britain after Margaret Thatcher's policy of pit closures devastated the coal industry in the 1980s, and memories of mining traditions have faded away. When I was a young reporter in Newcastle in the 1950s, I remember collieries closing down for the day as a mark of respect until a miner's body was recovered after a fall of stone – the most common cause of pit fatalities.

In 1936, hundreds of miles away from Gresford, a Durham miner, Robert Saint, was so moved by the entombment of the Welsh miners that he wrote a brass band composition, named after the colliery, that is now known internationally as The Miners' Hymn. It's played at every significant miners' event – and now even on Broadway, in the finale to Lee Hall's play, The Pitmen Painters.

As one of the characters in the play, Oliver Kilbourn, says about his fellow miners: "These people are like a family to me. They are my family – they are everything I've got."

That same feeling has sustained mining communities throughout all their hardships and adversity, and is what must be helping the New Zealand miners' relatives to cope with this hardly believable disaster at Pike River.